Interior Painting across Millis, Massachusetts.

The Census puts the median year built for housing in Millis at 1974, and it counts 60.6% of the town's 3,471 housing units as built before 1980. That single number shapes interior work more than any other, because federal lead-paint rules apply to paid work that disturbs paint in homes built before 1978. Sanding a stair rail, scraping a window stool or opening up a wall in one of those homes is regulated work, not just a cosmetic job.

The rest of the stock is spread across the decades: 568 units from the 1950s, 446 from the 1960s, 567 from the 1970s, 604 from the 1980s and 371 built since 2010. A room-by-room plan for a 1955 house looks different from one for a house finished in 2021, and the sections below walk through why.

Plaster in the oldest houses

About one unit in eight in town (12.6%, or 439 units) dates from 1939 or earlier, before drywall was common, and many houses of that age were finished with plaster over wood lath. Old plaster shows its own set of problems under fresh paint: hairline cracks that telegraph through, bulges where the keys behind the lath have let go, and patches of failing calcimine or distemper on old ceilings that new latex will lift off.

Good prep here means tapping walls to find loose areas, re-attaching or cutting out and patching them, sealing chalky or water-stained surfaces with a primer made for the job, and skim-coating where cracking is widespread. Paint over unrepaired plaster tends to crack again along the same lines within a season or two.

Trim from many eras

The National Register nomination for the Millis Center Historic District names Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and Bungalow buildings, and it records bungalows built there as infill from the 1910s to the 1930s. Inside houses of those styles you can find deep casings, built-in cabinets, paneled doors and stair balusters, often carrying many coats of old oil paint.

Oil-based layers need to be scuffed and primed with a bonding primer before waterborne enamel goes on, or the new finish can peel in sheets. On pre-1978 woodwork, that scuffing is done with lead-safe methods: plastic containment, misting rather than dry sanding, HEPA vacuums and a cleaning check at the end. Our lead-safe painting page explains the steps in more detail.

Postwar and newer rooms

Houses from the 1950s through the 1980s make up about 63% of the town's units by Census count. Depending on the builder, walls in those years can be plaster, rock lath with a plaster veneer, or early drywall with taped seams that have started to crack or show nail pops. Popcorn and textured ceilings from the 1970s and 1980s deserve testing before anyone scrapes them, since some textures of that period contained asbestos.

Newer drywall is simpler but not prep-free. A single flat coat over new drywall scuffs easily; a proper primer and two finish coats in a washable sheen make kitchens, hallways and kids' rooms easier to keep clean.

Basements and damp walls

A 2019 climate-resilience report prepared for Millis by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council lists inland and riverine flooding among the town's top concerns and notes that water bodies and wetlands make up 28% of its area. Before a finished basement is repainted, it helps to find out whether the walls stay dry. Paint applied over efflorescence or damp masonry blisters and flakes, so the fix starts with the water source; then the wall is cleaned, treated and coated with a masonry primer and a mildew-resistant finish.

For the outside of the house, see exterior painting in Millis. Kitchens with tired doors and boxes have their own page on cabinet painting in Millis.